The
human race is heading for ecological disaster because of its increasing
and all-pervasive assaults on our air, water, and land. Pollution is everywhere.
Our industrial civilization is heading toward environmental collapse,
and mankind's fate hangs in the balance.

Does
this scare you out of your wits? It's intended to do just that. This scenario
from a second-rate horror movie is passed off as scientific fact by a
new breed of doomsday prophets, the radical environmentalists. Read and
take heed --- the end is near. Here is an example of a typical environmentalist
scare story:

"The
present course of environmental degradation, if unchecked, threatens the
survival of civilized man. Yet the evidence is overwhelming that the way
in which we now live on the earth is driving its thin, life-supporting
skin, and ourselves with it, to destruction."

Environmentalists'
doomsday predictions would be comical, if it wasn't for the fact that
these scare stories have frightened local, state, and federal legislators
into creating a massive, poisonous layer of regulations. Environmental
regulations violate our property rights, restrict our personal liberties,
threaten our standard of living, and throw thousands of Americans out
of work.

Environmentalists
concoct end-of-the-world scenarios all the time. These predictions are
calculated to scare us, and usually turn out to be pure fantasy, exaggerations,
or deliberate distortions of the facts.

The
mother of all doomsday stories, of course, is global warming. For over
thirty years, environmentalists have scared us with this one. It seems
that car exhausts, forest clearing, power plants, and other industrial
activities increase carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. Increased
carbon dioxide will allegedly create a barrier in the atmosphere that
traps the Earth's heat, creating a "greenhouse effect" As a result, the
Earth's temperature will rise, causing glaciers to melt, seas to rise,
worldwide flooding, and calamity to the human race.

As expected,
there are many reputable scientists who think this theory is nonsense.
Other scientists have their own theories that totally contradict global
warming.

"Kenneth
E.F. Watt, professor of environmental studies at the University of California
at Davis, theorized that an excess of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
should lead to global cooling, not warming. Watt argued that carbon dioxide
will heat tropical oceans, leading to additional evaporation. This will
produce denser and more widespread clouds at high elevations, which will
decrease the amount of sunlight that penetrates the atmosphere. Some scientists
believe that the Earth is warming, but attribute the change to causes
other than carbon dioxide production. Frederick Seitz, past president
of the National Academy of Sciences, suggested that solar activity may
have caused global warming, and Reid Bryson, director of the Institute
of Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, believes
that dust and smoke are the primary causes of climate change."

There
are also many scientists who question whether the Earth has gotten warmer
over the last hundred years.

"Temperature
measurements may be biased by the effects of urbanization; weather stations
are located in urban areas, where heat-absorbing buildings and pavement
can raise the readings one to two degrees above the surrounding atmosphere.
After correcting for the "urban" effect, a study by the National Oceanographic
and Atmospheric Administration concluded that there was no statistically
significant evidence of warming in the United States [italics added].
Andrew R. Solow, a statistician at Woods Hole, pointed out that because
monitoring stations tend to be located on land rather than oceans and
more are in the Northern than in the Southern Hemisphere, temperature
readouts are not really global at all. Ten years of weather satellite
data have also shown no evidence of global warming [italics added]."

There's
little valid evidence of global warming. Instead, there's solid evidence
that the Earth has not been warming. Since 1978, a temperature-measuring
satellite called Tiros II has been orbiting the Earth 24-hours a day.
Guess what? The satellite's measurements showed no significant increase
or decrease in the Earth's temperature. Scientific temperature measurements
from Tiros II show no global warming trend in the last fifteen years.
In other words, global warming is a myth.

Many
eminent scientists agree that global warming and other environmental scare
stories are just unproven theories. Prior to the Earth Summit meeting
in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992, scientists from around the world issued
the Heidelberg Appeal. In the Appeal, scientists asked government leaders
at the summit to be careful. They asked the leaders not to make serious
environmental decisions based on pseudoscientific arguments or false and
non-relevant data. More than 250 scientists, including 27 Nobel prize
winners, issued the Appeal on June 1, 1992. Today, 2,300 scientists from
79 countries, including 65 Nobel prize winners, have signed the Appeal
.

Former
governor of Washington state and former chairwoman of the Atomic Energy
Commission, Dr. Dixy Lee Ray, also thought that global warming is nonsense.
In her wonderful 1993 book, "Environmental Overkill: Whatever Happened
To Common Sense?," she said that it was unlikely that carbon dioxide would
cause any significant changes in worldwide temperatures. Jeffrey Salmon
is executive director of the Washington-based George C. Marshall Institute.
In the July 1993 issue of Commentary, he flatly stated that he found no
valid scientific evidence to prove that man-made gases are causing the
Earth to warm from a greenhouse effect.

In short,
we are being conned. Government takes billions of tax dollars out of our
pocket to enforce massive environmental regulations that, in most cases,
protect you from nothing.

I could
describe many other eco-scare stories, but I think I've made my point.
These doomsday prophesies are either distortions or exaggerations of unproven
facts. Unfortunately, radical environmentalists and the liberal media
spout this eco-nonsense so often that we start to believe them. That's
the problem and the danger. Panicked, short-sighted Congressmen believe
the scare stories and then pass environmental regulations that strangle
our economy and destroy our property rights.

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It is
time that we see these environmental scare stories for what they are --
a tactic by left-leaning environmental radicals to destroy the thing they
hate most. What they hate most is our liberty, property rights, and the
free-market that can make life for human beings on this planet a joy instead
of a brutal struggle for existence.

Mr. Turtel has
written two books, published over fifty articles, and has been interviewed
in both print and broadcast media on the subject. His latest book, Public
Schools, Public Menace has garnered national media attention – recently,
for example, Dr. Laura Schlessinger featured the book on her nationally
syndicated radio show.

Joel Turtel is
available to discuss his book Public Schools, Public Menace in the media,
at conferences, or with individual groups. Be warned though, you may be
shocked by the revelations he has uncovered in America's public-school
system.